Video Playback Choppy

[Stefan Gehn]

Am Freitag, 28. Mai 2004 16:35 schrieb Calvin Spealman:
> Stefan Gehn wrote:
> > On Freitag Mai 28 2004 03:54, Calvin Spealman wrote:
> >> I know my system can handle them, but some larger-resolution videos
> >> really play lack-luster-like. The audio is much more noticeably choppy
> >> than the video.
> >
> > A bit more information would be handy, like:
> >
> > - which application did you use
>
> I've tried this in Noatun, Kaboodle, KMplayer, and Kaffeine all with the
> same results.

ok, that involves at least both libxine and mplayer so it's not really bound 
to anything inside kde.

> > - which video-output method was used (can be adjusted in at least xine
> > and mplayer backends, makes a HUGE difference for video)
>
> Unknown. I don't know how to change this.

see if "xdpyinfo | grep XV" yields a line reading "XVideo", that extension is 
needed for fast video overlays (instead of copying all the pixels onto the 
screen, that takes ages). If it's not there then copying the image onto the 
screen is taking most of the cpu and that can cause choppieness of both video 
and audio.

> typical intel sound card, standard on a budget desktop pc. same goes for
> the video, tho i dont know the exact video card i know its one of those
> used with the i810 driver.

Eww, the Intel onboard devices are not the best ones to choose. I don't know 
why though, maybe their linux-drivers are not perfect yet or something. I 
sometimes have problems with my i810 sound on my laptop too (starts skipping 
on internet streams).

> > - why do you know your system can handle it (i.e. which players are
> > working and which ones are not, otherwise I don't see how you can say
> > that it's working)
>
> I know everyone hates to hear this, but, "It works in Windows."

Well, I hoped it was just some misconfigured playback application but if both 
xine and mplayer fail then it's rather a driver issue (or maybe it's just a 
simple reason like dma mode not turn on for the harddisk) :(

> > All I can say is that I can play DVD fine using kaffeine, libxine from
> > CVS. My system is a amd xp2000, nvidia geforce fx5950xt, sb live.
>
> I shouldn't, and I don't, need a system like that just to watch my backup
> copies of Buffy and Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

I didn't really buy it for playing DVDs either, it's mostly because of games. 
Btw, on my laptop (P4M 1.4GHz, Intel i810 Sound, ATI Radeon 7500) DVD and 
video playback also works fine. Actually everything above 1GHz with a 
video-overlay capable gfx-card should never cause any problems.

Bye, Stefan aka mETz